Others brands have discovered that being more ethical is good business why have Nestlé not? greenpeace.org/kitkat #KitKat

There’s a battle going on between Nestlé, the makers of Kit Kat, and Greenpeace, over a video that Greenpeace has created to admonish Nestlé for its use of palm oil in its candy bars.

Greenpeace alleges that Nestlé had a video pulled from YouTube. It’s still available on Vimeo here (if it’s pulled from Vimeo, the link will stop working). On its Web site, Greenpeace discusses the problem with Nestlé’s use of palm oil: “Nestlé, maker of Kit Kat, uses palm oil from companies that are trashing Indonesian rain forests, threatening the livelihoods of local people and pushing orangutans towards extinction. We all deserve to have a break–but having one shouldn’t involve taking a bite out of Indonesia’s precious rain forests. We’re asking Nestlé to give rain forests and orangutans a break and stop buying palm oil from destroyed forests.”

In an online letter to Nestlé’s public relations department, Greenpeace lets the Kit Kat makers know that the steps taken so far to fix the palm oil problem are not acceptable.

Nestlé has made a statement on its own Web site in response. It says, among other things, that: “The company recently announced its commitment to using only ‘Certified Sustainable Palm Oil’ by 2015, when sufficient quantities should be available.” Adding that, “As a part of this commitment, we have accelerated the investigation of our palm oil supply chain to identify any palm oil source which does not meet our high standards for sustainability. Specifically, Nestlé has replaced the Indonesian company Sinar Mas as a supplier of palm oil with another supplier for further shipments. We confirm that Nestlé has only bought from Sinar Mas for manufacturing in Indonesia, and no palm oil bought from Sinar Mas has been used by Nestlé for manufacturing in any other country.”

It appears as if right now Nestlé has high standards for the palm oil it uses, but the company can’t promise that those standards are actually met. Nestlé has committed to make sure the standards are met by 2015.

A large business like Nestlé can’t shift gears overnight, but surely it can take less than five years.